Pound surges after David Davis suggests Government would consider paying the EU to keep access to Single Market post-Brexit

BREXIT BRITAIN may still pay into the EU’s mammoth budget to secure the “best possible” trade deal, the country’s Brexit Secretary David Davis said yesterday.

In a staggering concession, the Tory sparked a Brexit civil war by saying “of course we would consider” coughing up taxpayers’ cash after leaving the bloc if it meant securing access for goods and services to the European market.

The comments in the Commons sent the Pound to its highest level for 12 weeks.

Just hours later, Mr Davis signalled Britain could keep an element of the EU’s free movement immigration rules to protect the economy.

Veteran Eurosceptic Tories hit the roof after a Referendum campaign spent telling voters that leaving the European Union would save over £10 billion in annual contributions to Brussels.

Peter Bone said “people would be absolutely outraged” if the UK continued to pay the EU.
Leave.

EU founder Arron Banks branded it an “incredibly foolish concession” given Britain had yet to trigger Article 50 and begin negotiations with the EU.

He said Mr Davis was a politician “who clearly knows nothing about business or negotiation”.

But Chancellor Philip Hammond leapt to his fellow Minister’s defence by saying Brexit Britain had to use “as many tools in our toolbox as possible”.

On a visit to Scotland, the Chancellor said: “You can’t go into any negotiation expecting to get every single objective that you set out with and concede nothing on the way.

“David Davis is absolutely right not to rule out the possibility that we might want to contribute in some way to some form of mechanism.”

Downing Street added that options were being kept open.

The row came just 24 hours after allegations Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had told a number of EU ambassadors that he supported the principle of free movement.

Speaking yesterday he insisted: “I’m afraid I said absolutely no such thing.”

In a speech last night to the CBI business lobby group in Wales, Mr Davis said Brexit Britain would take back control of decisions over immigration to the UK.

But he said: “As we take back control of immigration by ending free movement as it has operated before, let me also say this: we won’t do so in a way that is contrary to the national and economic interest.”

He separately slapped down calls for a second EU Referendum.

He said: “A second Referendum would give those on the other side in the negotiations an incentive to give us the worst possible deal to try and force the British people to change their minds.

“So it’s not going to happen.”

Mr Davis said he is due to appear before the Brexit committee in December and that members of the committee had visited the Department for Exiting the EU.

He said: “But you also know full well as a previous international development secretary, as a previous cabinet minister, that the approach to this, the probable success of the negotiations depend very greatly on us being able to manage the information and keep what needs to be secret until the last minute secret.

“In terms of the other things you talked about this week, frankly, this is all based on a presumption that a scribbled note in Downing Street actually is anything like Government policy. It wasn’t.”